Are Thailand’s gay TV dramas the next K-pop?

THE “2gether cafe”, a pop-up restaurant on the second floor of the Tower Records Shibuya building in Tokyo, is a hub for a new Asian craze. Visitors, all women, swoon over wall-to-wall pictures of Bright Vachirawit and Win Metawin, stars of “2gether: The Series”, a Thai TV drama about two students who fall in love. The actors, both men, are depicted exchanging flirtatious glances and hugging. Airy Thai pop music plays in the background. “I didn’t know Thailand had such handsome men,” says Kobayashi Maki. An ardent fan of the TV series, she is studying Thai because of it.